Best known as the Opportunity Expert based on my proprietary leadership methodology called, "the immigrant’s perspective” that defines the characteristics to be a 21st century leader. This methodology promotes the idea of leading through a lens of opportunity – that is enabled through a mindset of continuous survival, renewal and reinvention. That if leaders embrace the immigrant’s perspective, they will have a distinct advantage in business by being able to see and seize previously unseen opportunities, and opportunities others don’t see at all. I am a former C-suite corporate executive and entrepreneur of several successful companies – my firm (Glenn Llopis Group) is a thought-leadership, human capital and business strategy consultancy. We enable corporations to develop their leadership identity to further define and implement go-to-market strategies. Most of my writings, speaking engagements and consulting assignments focus on leadership, change management, Hispanics in America, career advancement, marketing diversity management, entrepreneurship, business development and turn-around operations. I am the author of Earning Serendipity: 4 Skills for Creating and Sustaining Good Fortune in Your Work; Why a Personal Employee Brand will Save Your Career and Your Workplace, Preparing U.S. Leadership for the Cultural Demographic Shift, Awakening the Latino Factor and Women Must Dive In, Not Just Lean In. I make frequent appearances on local and national TV, including CNN, Fox, ABC, NBC, and Univision. Circle me on Google+

Why Most People Will Never Achieve The American Dream

What is the American Dream? How does one define it today and what is the path to earn it? This is an active conversation at the dinner table, and amongst friends, business leaders and entrepreneurs. We have certainly heard this question numerous times during the Presidential campaign and both candidates have yet to help America understand what this nebulous term really means.

People are hurting and as the pain grows, sharing it with others becomes more common. As such, leaders across the private and public sectors must come together and play a larger role to help define the new American Dream. When today’s leaders are forced to touch the business just as much as they lead it, they begin to understand the struggles that people face and the reality of how difficult it is to create and sustain momentum. Leaders are now getting their hands dirty and are much more aware of how difficult it is to achieve anything that is purposeful and that matters.

On the other hand, these same leaders know that the rules of business and societal engagement are evolving rapidly. As such, this requires 1) a new approach to build trust, 2) relevancy to create meaningful relationships, and 3) an almost flawless track-record to be considered for a loan or an investment to be made in a particular opportunity. This is why we speak of the new American Dream. Unlike the past, when all you needed was a college degree to increase your chances of achieving the dream – today much more is required for you to even be considered to earn the right to pursue the dream.

Leaders must remind themselves and advise others that to achieve the new American Dream requires one thing that is certain: you must balance knowledge (the head) with wisdom (the heart). It’s no longer just about what you know, but what you do with what you know. In the new American economy, it’s about transparency, trust, opening up your heart and leading with kindness. Why do you think that so many American’s reacted most favorably to Ann Romney’s speech at the Republican convention?

The new American Dream is no longer about pursuing opportunity – but learning how to earn the right to both see it and seize it. Today, the real opportunities are hidden. They hide behind doors that only a combination of knowledge and wisdom can earn. Opportunity is the true mother of success and for too many years, access to it has been made too easy and thus abused by greed and distrust. The new American Dream requires you to earn opportunity. This doesn’t mean that you will be able to seize it – it takes time to have a seat at the table – but you must get the conversation started.

This is what most people don’t understand about the new ground rules and what leaders must learn and then be more deliberate about teaching others. Opportunity in the past was available for those who could see it. Today, it you must be able to successfully navigate yourself “through a filter” that earns you the right to be considered for the opportunity. This filter evaluates how effectively you manage your knowledge and wisdom equally.

Why do you think it’s so hard to get in the door these days? People need to trust your intentions, measure your credibility and believe that you are interested in pursuing a relationship for the right reasons (in a moment’s notice).

Unfortunately, many people in America still believe that government will solve their problems or that big business will fuel the economy in a way that gets us back to normal. What used to be defined as normal – those days are gone. Long gone. And I am deeply concerned for those that still believe they can exist. Today, history is being written and we are all learning from the modern-day innovators who have redefined how to pursue the new American Dream rightly (e.g., Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Howard Schultz and Richard Branson).

In the past, government and big business could serve as both providers and enablers for opportunity. Today, we are fortunate if either of these groups can consistently provide any real opportunities – and if they can, they certainly are no longer capable of enabling it for you. That’s no longer their responsibility (and the truth is – it never was). When the economy was strong, it appeared as if that both of these groups were enabling opportunity when in reality they were just providing more resources than usual to make it easier for people to reach some level of success. Were we living in an artificial reality? This is why there is much more discussion these days around why people need to have a much more entrepreneurial attitude in order to create their own success.

The American Dream of the past inspired hope and optimism. When you could believe that anything was possible, it became easier to dream. While I wholeheartedly encourage people to continue dreaming (and dream big), you must be aware that the infrastructure and resources of the past are either gone, much more difficult to access, or in the process of being recreated to support the new ground-rules previously mentioned. As such, earning the right to pursue an opportunity has now become not only a responsibility, but requires a set of skills that must be learned in order to properly seize opportunity and keep momentum alive.

In 2009, I launched my first book, Earning Serendipity – 4 Skills for Creating and Sustaining Good Fortune in Your Work. At the time of the book’s release, I thought it was a message that America’s corporations and its leaders were not ready to accept, but should be considering. In fact, the title was changed a few times until I realized that earning serendipity was the best representation of what America and the workplace had forgotten to do over the course of the past decade. When our economic bubble inflated and lines of credit were easy to obtain, people became self-satisfied, grew lazy and lost their hunger to compete.

Earning serendipity was a term I coined to represent opportunity mastery, innovation, humanity; what diversity could do for business, personal reinvention, your legacy, the spirit of giving and the urgency of now! It was the introduction to the immigrant mentality advantage.

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At this point in time, the laboring class which includes everyone that doesn’t risk capital to earn a living (teachers, office workers, factory workers, service industry workers, government employees, etc.), is so comfortable, it has no incentive to become “self employed” – the original “American Dream.” Unfortunately, the self employed are the creators of the jobs and with very few laborers entering the ranks of the self employed, very few jobs are being created. As government continues to “tax the rich” (who also happen to be the self employed), the incentives for self employment wane even further.

Americans say the love freedom, but the reality is most of us are indentured to our employers. Until we realize and celebrate the “American Dream” as business ownership, instead of a good “laboring” job, we’re doomed.

Well said. As a society our half needs to convince the other half that the American dream is in our own hands; a difficult task when even the big and powerful are always in search of government handouts.

The issue is “our half” in many respects does indeed hold the American Dream in “our hands.” What is critical for a prosperous society, rather than just our half and the other half, is opportunity for the other hands, and equal access to the education, training and resources necessary to access the ever fleeting “American Dream.”